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"This isn't your kind of party, Syliva"
Gently he tried to warn Sylvia, but she was to tender, too trusting to see that she was being deceived.
by Audrie Manley-Tucker
Illustrated by Rob Levering
SHE was almost seventeen, and very young for her years-perhaps because she had grown up quietly in the grey stone house on the edge of a country town, without brothers or sisters or a father. She was tee thin, her silky hair held back in a ponytail, her eyes wide-spaced and thoughtful, her mouth sensitive.
One day, her mother thought, she will be pretty; but not just yet. She had an unawakened quality still, a liking for jeans and shirts and the company of the dogs that was not just a pose, but a screen for shyness and uncertainty. .
Her mother worried that she didn't care enough about the things that area a part of being almost seventeen- pretty clothes, meeting people, parties. When she worried aloud, Sylvia just smiled and shook her head, and said, truthfully, that she was quite happy.
Then, too, her job was all wrong, Mrs. Chantry fretted; a solicitor’s office, with withered, elderly Mr. Crowell and a freckle-faced office boy of fifteen for company.
"I like it," Sylvia said simply; and it was true. The office had an indifferent charlady and so it always smelled faintly dusty, her window looked directly ever a plane tree in the quiet square, with only intermittent traffic to break the dreamy peace.
Mr. Growell and Fred were undemanding company. Sometimes, good-looking brisk young men came to the office, stopping by her desk to chat, but she was wrapped in a cocoon of shyness, unable to find the right, the bright things to say, and she was almost glad when they went away.
Mrs. Chantry never understood that her daughter hadn't outgrown the painful, early uncertainty of adolescence, and couldn’t mold herself into the shape of the pretty, vital creature she herself had been before her husband's death.
Sylvia came heme en a cold Saturday morning in December to find her mother excitedly waving a letter.
"Simon is coming to stay for a few weeks in January!"
"Simon?" Sylvia frowned, remembering that her mother had gene to school with a girl called Elsie, who lived in Scotland, wrote long, frequent letters and had occasionally come to stay with them, bringing her very superior schoolboy son.
"Last time I saw Simon Blacley,'' she said, "he was eighteen, and' knew everything. "
"Oh, darling, that was five years ago," her mother said inconsequentially. "He's probably much nicer, now. He's spending a term teaching at a private school nearby so of course I wrote and told Else we'd love to have him here."
Sylvia looked over ever the garden; ii sloped down to a river that was neither ; very wide nor very deep, and was crossed by a small footbridge.
The house on the far side had gardens that sloped up from the river bank, so that from where she sat, Sylvia could see the back of the house opposite quite clearly.
"Look, there's Elaine Summers," she said.
Mrs. Chantry put the letter back in its envelope her mouth tight; Sylvia's admiration for Elaine had a faint flavour of hero-worship that irritated her. But no one could strip the illusions from a seventeen-year-old -only time did that, she reflected.
After lunch Sylvia went up to her room; from her window she saw Elaine Summers, without being seen.
Elaine and her mother were the Shining Ones, she thought half-ashamed of the old nickname she had privately given them; and yet knowing that no other title would fit so well.
They had moved into the River House a couple of years ago, and, at first glance, Elaine and her mother looked like sisters. Only when you were close to them, did you see that the older woman's golden beauty was harder, more metallic.
And if I could be like Elaine, when I'm twenty, Sylvia thought, I'd be perfectly happy.
When Sylvia had first seen her, Elaine had been standing in the sunlight, by: the river, wearing a dress as pale as her hair, and she had seemed to shine; not only because she was beautiful, with her smooth, heavy, pale-gold hair, topaz eyes, and delicate, brittle-boned look; but because she moved in an aura of grace and laughter, poise and loveliness, completely unattainable to a coltish fifteen-year-old.
IN the privacy of her room Sylvia had tried to copy the unhurried grace of Elaine's walk, the way of tilting her head and smiling, or holding out a hand, but it had always fallen flat, somehow, leaving her with a feeling of clumsy inadequacy.
Sometimes the Summers came ever to Willow Tree to see the Chantrys; not often because there was too much else in their busy colourful lives.
If they were unaware of the chill of disapproval under Mrs. Chantry's gentle courtesy, Sylvia was acutely aware of it. Her mother didn't understand -she was ordinary. Content with her house, her committees, her welfare work.
Mrs. Summers ran a small, exclusive gown shop. Sometimes, Elaine helped her mother with the shop, or worked around the house in jeans and sweaters. She always seemed to be just going somewhere, spilling out of somebody’s car, and there had never been a time when she wasn’t brilliantly gay.
But, for once, Elaine had nothing to do that afternoon. She strolled over to Willow Tree in the early dusk, a length of brocade over her arm she was well aware of and enjoyed, Sylvia's unstinted admiration.
"I thought you’d like to see my dress material," she said: In the lamplight of the sitting-room, it shimmered like stardust.
"It's for the dance at the Whitefalls Hotel, in January," she said. "Aren't you going to let Sylvia go this year, Mrs. Chantry? I could easily find her a nice young man as a suitable escort."
Colour spread rosily under Sylvia's pale skin. She was poised halfway between terror-of the unknown quantity of the dance and a strange young man escorting her - delight that Elaine had included her, casually, in her grown-up world.
"Next time," said her mother. "Sixteen is too young."
"I shall be seventeen by then," Sylvia argued stubbornly, thinking: How wonderful to be part of Elaine's group of people, just for an evening, one of the Shining Ones, capturing a little of their charm for herself.
MRS. CHANTRY said nothing. Sylvia sighed, as she walked down the garden with Elaine.
"Tell your mother she can't make a little girl of you forever," Elaine said provocatively. "Or you could let yourself out, after she's gene to bed."
Sylvia shook her head. "I couldn’t."
"Poor Sylvia! You don't have much fun, and you never meet anyone!"
"Simon’s coming to stay with us."
"Who is he?" There was a quickening of interest in the lazy voice.
"His mother and mine were at school together. He’s a lot older than I am-twenty-three.''
"Bring him over to supper some evening Sylvia," Elaine said, coolly. "Bye!" She was gone, leaving an echo of spicy perfume.
The Summers were skiing in Switzerland when Simon arrived. Because he came unexpectedly early on a Saturday afternoon, the new dress that her mother had bought for Sylvia was still spread over the bed.
Sylvia, in jeans, and an old jersey that had been her father’s, was working at the bottom of the garden, turning over in the compost heap.
She heard her mother’s voice, with an agitated note in it, and straightened, running her fingers through her already disordered hair.
"Coming!" She stuck the spade in the heap, and went indoors. A tall young man came across the drawing-room to meet her.
His face had filled out since she had last seen him; it was square-jawed, almost good-looking, his eyes were very and clear behind thick horn rimmed glasses.
He was simon and unimportant because she had always known him. Sylvia dusted her hands, avoided her mother’s dismayed look, and said gravely: "Hello! I smell of compost, so you’d better not come too near! "
"It's a good smell," Simon said, with a smile. "Rich and earthy. Hew tall you’ve grown, Sylvia-I only top you by a few inches, don’t I?"
She smiled, at ease with him, thinking it wouldn't be so bad having him here, after all. He was no longer superior and remote- there was a quality of gentleness and quiet strength about him that she liked.
Sylvia went upstairs, washed, and changed into the new frock. It had a full skirt covered with tiny apple-blossom sprays and she thought how hopelessly young it was.
Simon was talking to her mother when she went downstairs. His glance rested on the figure in the doorway, but Sylvia didn't notice the deepening of interest in his eyes.
"I thought you might both come with me this evening in my car, and show me where I have to report on Monday morning," Simon said.
"I'll be busy," Mrs. Chantry said swiftly. "But Sylvia can go. "
Sylvia and Simon drove away from Willow Tree in the evening, through the village of Markton, and Sylvia pointed out the square and her office.
"I like working there," she said. "It's peaceful-and quiet."
"I didn't think you wanted those things at seventeen!" he teased. Her colour deepened, unexpectedly.
"You’re shy; you were always shy, Syliva," he told her. "Don't you go out? No boy friend?"
"No" she said, with touch of frosty dignity that made him laugh.
"You looked just like that when I used to tease you!" he reminded her.
She pulled a face at him, suddenly at ease again. "You were horribly superior -you knew everything!"
"That’s because I was only eighteen last time we met! Now I wonder if I know anything," he said, with a touch of humility.
They pulled up outside the school, and he smiled at her.
"Think they’ll know, in class, that I’am brand-new? I’ll be scared stiff"
"You?" she replied, astonished.
"Oh, I won’t show it: but I shall certainly have butterflies in my stomach. What time do you leave the office on Monday?"
"Five o’clock."
"I shan’t be ready to leave school much before that; wait for me, and I’ll drive you home!"
ON the Monday, Sylvia was gathering up her bag and gloves when Simon hooted the car horn outside in the square. He held the door for her, and she climbed in.
"Well?" she demanded.
"Oh. it wasn’t so bad! Some of it was fun, in fact. There was one boy, red-haired and tough as they come..."
They talked and laughed all the way home. Oh, if only I could feel at ease like this with everyone, Sylvia thought, as she ran indoors.
She stopped short. Elaine was in the garden.
She came forward with her slow, graceful walk, but there was something almost mechanical about the smile she flashed Simon, as Sylvia made the introductions, as though part of her was still somewhere else.
"Switzerland was wonderful!" she said gaily.
Then she seemed to recognize Simon's presence for the first time, and her smile deepened. "Do you know Switzerland, Mr. Blackley?"
"Not very well; just a little place called Braunwald-not one of the fashionable places, but pretty."
"I went there," Elaine said dreamily. "And to Davos, Don't forget you're coming over to supper. Shall we say tomorrow evening?"
Her smile asked Simon for agreement, which he gave, with a rather remote courtesy that puzzled Sylvia.
She watched Elaine walk towards the river, and said, "She's very lovely, isn't she?"
"Very," Simon agreed drily. "Do I detect a note of envy? "
"Well!" She smiled humorously. ''I'd like to have that much poise!"
"You will have when you're her age," he retorted.
Simon had poise, she reflected, of a different kind from Elaine's; a sort of quiet maturity about him.
ELAINE gave a big party the following week. Sylvia wore a rust-coloured dress and an angora stole of her mother's. She had combed her hair into a smooth sophisticated style and clipped pearl studs into her ears, but her reflection in the mirror filled her with despair.
Elaine had turned the drawing- room into a southern-looking night club. There was a wonderful running buffet and there was champagne and cocktails to drink. Elaine looked beautiful, and there was a man called Norman with her, whom Simon had never seen before. He had a moody, intense look about him, and Elaine kept looking at him when she thought no one was watching.
Sylvia saw Mrs. Summers face once and knew that she didn't like Norman - perhaps because Harry Fleming was there, and Elaine paid him no attention.
Everyone in Markton said that Elaine and Harry would be engaged, though Sylvia thought they were wrong. He was too old for Elaine, thirty-ish, already thick-set and florid.
Presently, Mrs. Summers went upstairs, and Elaine soon had some of them dancing in their bare feet in a ridiculous parody of the Charleston.
"I think we should be going," Simon said gently, as he guided her away from the wilder dancers.
"But I'm enjoying it!" she protested. "Not really:" He spoke with gentle authority. "This isn't your kind of party, Sylvia."
She acknowledged the truth that; the dancing was getting wilder, and a couple collapsed on the floor, laughing hilariously. .
She went, without argument; they were the first to leave, but she hadn't really belonged with these people who weren't so young and gauche that they felt silly dancing in bare feet.
In the morning, when Sylvia and Simon drove away with a picnic basket between them, the River House was shuttered.
Simon saw her look towards the house, and said, "You like Elaine, don't you?"
Unthinkingly, she said the words aloud, "One of the Shining Ones."
She flushed and then, remembering that it was only Simon, added, with a touch of defiance, "I read it in a book; about a girl, who was special and different from anyone else, and everyone loved her. 'She was all light and laughter and grace' -I remember reading that bit. Elaine is like that."
"And you want to be?" he replied.
"Yes." It was a difficult admission.
"Be yourself, Sylvia, not a copy of someone else. You're as cool and fresh as a spring morning.
"No one has ever told me that before," she said candidly, sudden delight lifting her heart.
"Remember it, next time you feel envious of Elaine." His voice was brusque, almost abrupt.
SYLIA saw Elaine only once during the next few days; she was standing on the towpath with Norman, and they seemed to be arguing about something, then she came through the garden and started talking to Simon.
Simon and Elaine, she thought. At first, it had seemed the only, the inevitable thing. Now, Sylvia wasn't sure, and it didn't seem important any more. Elaine was in love with this Norman person. Only that morning Sylvia had seen Harry Fleming in town, looking like a thundercloud.
Elaine flashed Sylvia a brilliant smile as the younger girl came across.
"I've come to borrow you, poppet! Mother's going to be away for the night, and she insists on my having company. Will you stay with me?"
"I'd love to!" Sylvia said, bright- eyed. Simon didn't look pleased, she thought; probably her mother wouldn't like it, either.
But Mrs. Summers had already asked her mother.
"I couldn't very well refuse," Mrs. Chantry said shortly.
"Why don't you like Elaine?" Sylvia asked her mother.
"Because under all that surface charm, she's just empty; ruthless and selfish, too-she’ll take what she wants, always, and not care about anyone else."
IT was wonderful having the run of the River House; Elaine had never been more brilliantly carefree and gay.
It was late when Sylvia went to bed in the room across the landing, but she couldn't sleep. The clock was striking twelve when she heard a door close softly, far below.
She slid out of bed, and went to the window. In the brilliant moonlight, she saw Elaine's slender figure skim down the garden path towards the dark bulk of a figure waiting outside the gate that led to the towpath.
The man turned as Elaine approached, and Sylvia saw that it was Norman; the two figures were suddenly one, and Sylvia climbed into bed with a curious flat feeling of dismay and disappointment.
At breakfast. Elaine mentioned Norman casually, as though he didn't really matter. "I met him when we were in Switzerland. He's an artist; he's clever, but he doesn't make any money-they never do."
This morning, Elaine's brilliance was sharp, and tense; she seemed relieved when Sylvia went back to Willow Tree.
The flat, let-down feeling stayed with Sylvia all day -until the evening. And she never forgot the cold sense of shock she felt, arriving home with Simon to find Mrs. Summers with her mother.
Elaine's mother had been crying; the wintry sunlight lay cruelly across her face, with its streaked powder and smudged mascara.
Her lipstick had been put on thickly, and with an unsteady hand; her bright hair fell untidily across her cheeks, showing the dark colour at the roots, and under the heavy make-up her face was old and defeated.
SYLVIA paused uncertainly in the doorway. Her mother frowned warningly and shook her head, as though telling them to go.
But Mrs. Summers looked up, intercepting the look, and said bitterly, "She might as well know? Everyone in town's going to know tomorrow! Elaine's gone away with Norman! He hasn't any money and he hasn't a job -how could she be such a fool? "
Sylvia felt sick. "Why did she run away?" she said, stunned.
"Because he's already married," Mrs. Summers said flatly. "He has a wife in Cornwall. He's going to live in London, at his studio, with Elaine -it was all in the letter she left. And everyone thought she was going to marry Harry!" ,
"But she didn't love him," Sylvia said slowly.
"Love doesn't last -money does," she retorted cynically. "The shop isn't paying its way and we needed Harry-she knew that! "
Abruptly, Sylvia ran out into the garden, towards the summer-house, that had been her childhood sanctuary when life bruised and bewildered her. She sat there, taut and unhappy, a great weight of misery and despair pressing down on her.
She thought of Mrs. Summers, wearing a different face under the one she painted on, saying that love didn't last, that they had wanted Harry's money. That had been the most important part of Elaine's running away, so far as she was concerned.
Her world was suddenly ripped apart. She had wanted to be like Elaine, whom she thought of as unlike anyone else all that golden loveliness had been only on the surface. She wasn't one of the Shining Ones. She had glittered, for a while, on Sylvia's horizon, and now she had run away to live with someone else's husband. No words, no excuses, could ever make that seem anything but cheap and shabby. Life was horrible she thought, people were ugly, underneath.
WHEN Simon came to the summer-house she was startled, because he made no sound, stepping over the grass. He sat down, and put an arm about her shoulders. "Poor Sylvia!" he said softly.
"Why?" she demanded. "Because it's such a rough awakening -your world of illusion has gone."
"You knew about Elaine!" she accused. "You weren't surprised!"
"I guessed -because I saw her as she really was. You put her on a pedestal and wanted to be a copy of all you thought she stood for in the bright, glamorous grown-up world."
"I don't want the grown-up world any more," she admitted sadly.
"You have to accept it, Sylvia. You can't go back to being a child. But keep your own set of values always -and one day you'll realize that there's more than a river dividing you from Elaine. She's as shallow and greedy as a spoilt child. "
"Everyone's like that!" Sylvia retorted.
"No. Some human beings are weaker than others, that's all. Her mother wanted her to make a good marriage because they hadn't enough money to live the way they wanted to live, and suddenly Elaine couldn't face that prospect. So she ran away."
"But everything's spoilt!" she whispered, with a final, fleeting return to childhood; and his smile was tender.
"Not for you- if you learn to accept people as they are. For Elaine, it's spoilt. Don't you understand what I'm trying to tell you? The person you believed Elaine to be never really existed -so how can you want to be like her?"
She tried to smile through the tears that came at last, groping uncertainly towards the truth in his words, comforted by the strength in the arm that held her.
"You sound so old and wise, Simon!"
"Do I?" With his fingertips, he brushed away her clinging tears. "I like you very much indeed, Sylvia- just as you are, a spring morning. And remember- if growing-up is a painful business, it's sometimes a very swift one, when we least expect it to be!"
She lifted her face, blinking, seeing him for the first time, astonished because he was not the Simon she had known for so long, but someone whose compassion stirred her to life with a longing half-pain, half-delight.
Simon, she thought, her heart racing furiously: he didn't matter because I thought of him as part of the family- now I don't think of him that way, and he matters very much indeed.
VERY gently: he bent and kissed her lips. She is seventeen, he thought, on the edge of a strange, adult world. She will fall in and out of love half a dozen times, although she wouldn't believe that, if I told her. But perhaps, in the end, it will be just us two, after all -for always. It's too soon to know, yet, whether the promise of morning will be fulfilled.
Some of this Sylvia read in his face, as she put up a hand, almost questioningly, to touch his cheek. She knew that the quiet world of the dusty office, the plane tree, the house whose gardens touched the river, all that made up the total of her days, would never hold her in such serene contentment again. It was changed, brought into sharper focus and touched with magic of Simon’s kiss.
"You'll be going away soon," she said sadly.
He took her hand and folded both of his over it. "But there are still plenty of days left yet, my almost-grown-up Sylvia!"
They walked out of the summerhouse together, hand-in-hand. Sylvia didn't glance at River House as they went indoors, but she knew a moment's pity for Elaine, who hadn't understood that love was not a toy you grabbed with both hands.
"I shall come back next year," Simon promised her; and as his hand closed warmly, reassuringly over hers, her heart lifted with a joy she had never known before. THE END
© Audrie Manley-Tucker, 1960
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